RESUMO
The effects of temperature, time, pressure and brine concentration were assessed during osmotic dehydration (OD) of H. edentatus fillet. The response surface methodology (RSM) showed that using vacuum during the OD process did not cause a statistically significant change (p > 0.05) on the water loss (WL), solid gain (SG) and water activity (aw). The other factors showed a statistically significant effect (p ≤ 0.05) on at least one of these responses. Through RSM, the following condition could be defined for the OD process: brine concentration at 25 % NaCl, 25 °C, 120 min and atmospheric pressure. The Azuara model was shown to be effective in predicting the WL and SG kinetics during the OD process. The simplified solution of Fick's second law of diffusion for a slab geometry was used to calculate the average values of apparent diffusion coefficient (Deff), namely 4.73 × 10(-10) m(2)/s for WL and 1.33 × 10(-9) m(2)/s for SG.
